Snake Dreams (9 page)

UTTERLY DESPONDENT
when her hero did not appear during the midafternoon, Sarah ascended the rocky ridge behind the house, brushed pine needles and dust off a sandstone boulder, and sat down to watch the long dirt road that meandered miles from Daisy’s remote home to the graveled road, which crossed the Rio Piedras bridge to terminate at the paved highway whose name was Route 151, from which junction the rutted road came all the way back again. When a puffed-up cloud thundered overhead, insolently began to spit and sprinkle on her head, she returned to the house and, quiet as a mouse, tried to hold the tears inside.

AT ABOUT
half past three o’clock, Daisy’s telephone rang. Sarah Frank jumped up to answer it, but the old woman got there first. It was Mrs. Bushman, the ranch foreman’s kindly wife. Dolly B. said she had tried to telephone Daisy earlier, but the electric power had been knocked off all the way from Montrose to Salida by a big thunderstorm—even the cell-phone towers had been out of commission. Dolly was very sorry, but not to worry—Jerome Kydmann had left quite some time ago.

After listening to this report and hanging up, Daisy told the expectant teenager, “We’ll be picked up in a little while.”

Having some dignity to preserve, Sarah refrained from leaping and dancing. But she did pick up her cat and give him an enthusiastic hug.

PER DAISY’S
promise, not too many minutes had passed before a shiny red F-250 pickup pulled into the grove of piñon and juniper that dotted her front yard. Sarah ran outside, a smile splitting her little brown face.
Charlie’s got a new truck!
When she saw Jerome Kydmann, aka the Wyoming Kyd (a genuine native
of Wyoming, Rhode Island), getting out of the vehicle, her smile drooped at the edges.

He tipped his white cowboy hat. “Sorry I’m so danged late. I would’ve shown up bright ’n’ early this morning, but just as I was about to leave I found out the starter wasn’t working. Took me a while to get it up and running again.”

Sarah had no interest in matters mechanical. “Where’s Charlie?”

Charlie Moon’s good-looking employee flashed the boyish grin. “Ah . . . some important business came up the boss had to attend to, so he asked me to bring you ladies up to the Columbine.”

Sarah was struck dumb.
Important
business? The teenager hung her head, but she did not weep. The tough little lady balled her hands into knotty little fists, clenched her teeth. Growing up is hard work.

It got harder when the Wyoming Kyd, who realized that the girl was upset, figured that she might feel a notch or two better if he explained just
how
important the boss’s business was. He cranked the engaging grin up to about three hundred watts and said, “Charlie had to make a run over to the airport and pick up a VIP.”

Sarah asked who the Very Important Person was.

The Kyd told her. He might as well have plunged a dagger into her tender heart.

The girl turned her back on Mr. Tact, ran into the house. She passed Daisy coming out.

The handsome young cowboy’s grin long gone, he looked to the old woman for help. “What’s wrong—was it somethin’ I said?”

“Oh, no, Knot Head.” Daisy snorted. “You’re a sure-enough silver tongue.” He had, in fact, met her expectations. Nay, exceeded them. And revived her faith in the hairy-legged sex’s innate ability to make asses of themselves at every opportunity. And though Daisy felt sorry for Sarah, to be proven right was quite gratifying.

The perplexed fellow stared at the peculiar old Indian woman. “I don’t get it.” Truer words had never been spoken.

Daisy took this member of the clueless gender by the arm and, in her hobbling gait, led him to a shady grape arbor, where a horde of small black wasps whined about in search of something to sting. “Charlie’s change of plans has complicated things, and there’s a few things we need to get straight.”

The boyish grin appeared again. “Oh, right.”

Daisy pointed to a hand-hewn pine bench. “Let’s you and me sit down and have a little talk about what’s what and what’s not.”

And so they did.

Fine. But what about Sarah’s Extraordinary Adventure?

Shhhh. Ever so stealthily, it is creeping up on her!

Small Talk

After the mind-numbing flights from Dulles International Airport to St. Louis to Colorado Springs, the pleasing prospect of deplaning and seeing the Ute’s smiling face for the first time in months had FBI Special Agent Lila Mae McTeague fairly tingling with anticipation. Charlie Moon was so full of life . . . so—so spontaneous! But he had sounded ever so slightly tense during last evening’s telephone conversation.
Like perhaps I might be arriving at an inopportune time. I hope he’s still the same old Charlie.

The tall rancher—looking mighty fine in his tailor-made gray suit, gray John B. Stetson hat, and hand-tooled gray cowboy boots—enveloped the pretty lady in an embrace that left her—for a dizzying moment—breathless. And not entirely because he had squeezed Lila Mae’s first good whiff of Colorado air right out of her. The moment was all too brief.

While Moon manhandled her luggage off the segmented track and out to the Columbine Expedition, it was all chitchat about how nice the weather was but it would sure be great to get some rain, and after all that time at thirty-six thousand feet, wasn’t it great to get her feet on the ground again.

For the first time ever, they were not entirely comfortable together. It was like a first date.

Not that Charlie Moon didn’t try. For reasons he could not entirely understand, the man could not bring himself to broach
the delicate subject. Every time he made an attempt to mention what was on his mind, the words stuck in his throat. There was a deep concern that—
If I don’t say it just right, she’s liable to say, “No way, bub.” Or, “Let’s take some time to think about it, Charlie—this is a very important decision for both of us.”
Which was just a polite way of saying, “No way, bub.” The engagement ring in his jacket pocket was a fine prop and would be a considerable help when he got around to popping the question. As he drove along the mountain road, chasing the afternoon sun, the prospective groom rehearsed several brief speeches. But as he turned them over in his mind one by one, the cowboy under the fine gray hat rejected them all.

About an hour west of Colorado Springs, Charlie Moon pulled into a rural mom-and-pop grocery store and café that featured a couple of old-fashioned gas pumps that had no slots for credit cards. It was a friendly place, where Mom and Pop trusted their clientele. A handwritten sign on each pump advised customers to Get Your Gas Then Pay Inside. Moon shed his jacket, filled the tank, entered the store to pay for the fuel.

Lila Mae, who had no great interest in rustic roadside businesses, was staring straight into the future, musing about what it would be like to be Charlie’s wedded wife.
Mrs. Lila Mae Moon
. The moniker did have a nice ring to it. As the muser happened to glance at the driver’s seat, where Mr. Moon had left his jacket, she noticed something. A small, white plastic bag that was about to fall from one of the pockets. Now, the federal cop was not overly nosy. If the lady had suspected what was in the smallish sack, she would not have touched it with the pointy tip of an immaculately lacquered fingernail. But she was one of those very orderly souls who cannot abide the prospect of something escaping from its proper place, and so had no option but to correct the situation. Which was when she noticed the label on the bag:

PIPPIN’S FINE JEWELRY

Granite Creek, Colorado

Lila Mae reacted instinctively, withdrawing her hand as if it had encountered a hyperactive mouse in her pocket.

Goodness—that’s none of my business!
This was her conscience, bolstered by a formidable sense of integrity.

The let’s-not-be-too-picky portion of her brain begged to disagree:
But it
is
your business—you’re thinking about marrying the guy, aren’t you?

In support of this point of view, the sneaky lobe (which was prone to nauseating baby-talk) tossed in its two cents:
It won’t hurt to take a teensy-weensy little peeky-weeky.

Let’s Not Be Too Picky was quick to agree:
Charlie’s still inside, paying for the gas. What he don’t know won’t hurt him
.
Et cetera.

So she did. Opened the bag, found the black velvet box. Opened it.

Oh my!

Well, what could she do? Just look? Not on your life. After glancing at the open door to the grocery store and seeing no sign of her practically betrothed, Lila Mae slipped the gold band onto her finger. It was a wee bit tight. As she held her hand up to admire the ornament, white light that had departed the nearest star eight minutes and twenty-two seconds earlier refracted along the diamond’s multitudinous facets, lit up the lady’s eyes with a dazzle of rainbow hues.
It is so lovely!

Lila Mae is, in a word—
entranced.

She is, in three more words—
not paying attention.

But the lady is not so distracted that she does not hear the characteristic sound of boot heels crunching on gravel. That’s right. Here comes Charlie Moon, big smile on his face, big Styrofoam cup of coffee in each hand.

“Eeeek—eeeek!”

No, really. This is exactly what she said, word for word—whilst pulling the ring off her finger, jamming it into the little black box, deftly slipping said box into the white plastic bag,
the bag into the gray suit-coat pocket—and Charlie Moon, who is making yard-long strides—is now so close that she can see the whites of his eyes!

Oh, I just barely made it—

But wait. What is this small rectangle of paper that has fallen from the bag, fluttered down to the floorboard to rest near the pointy tip of her stylish shoe? A sales slip, no doubt. But there is no time to restore the receipt to its rightful place, so the FBI special agent—who has been trained to make lightning-quick decisions in the most harrowing circumstances imaginable—snatched it up, stuffed it into her purse, snapped it shut. And—like the arrival of the U.S. Cavalry with sabers raised when the war-painted Indians are about to make the final, bloody attack—
just in the nick of time!

Whew!

WHEN MR. MOON
and his favorite companion were within a few minutes of Granite Creek, he mentioned—in an offhand way—his plans for the evening.

After listening intently, Lila Mae McTeague nodded. Yes, that would be fine with her.
But why didn’t he tell me about this last night?
She thought she knew:
Probably because he thought that I might decide to put the Colorado trip off until next month. Or the month after that, or
. . .

But later on, as the lady and the Man in Her Life joined a group of Moon’s rowdy friends, it wasn’t long before Lila Mae was clapping her hands. Applause? Yes. Also her way of getting with the rhythm. The Ute musician was perched on a three-legged stool, plucking at all five strings on his red-hot banjo. Miss McTeague was delighted to be with her bluegrass beau and Mr. Moon was right happy to be with his special agent sweetie, also mighty glad to be picking his way up Cripple Creek and just as pleased to make his way back down again. And so it went, the lady’s hands a-clapping, the man’s long fingers pluckity-plucking
taut banjo strings.
Twangity-twang-twang!
Foggy Mountain Breakdown.